Photo Credit : Theslaeslion

By the middle of my first year in a Social Science PhD program (Information Systems), I realized I had  a  handicap in research writing. Coming from a background in computer science, I was literally stumped on two early proposal writing tasks – I  struggled in organizing my ideas, presenting them in a logical sequence and telling a coherent story . As I read more papers, I realized something. Research writing in the Social Sciences is a bit of an art. It is systematic, and rigorous, but artistic still. We tell stories . And storytelling is a fundamental aspect of the publication process.

Writing papers and getting them published is vital for Ph.D. students who want to get research positions after graduation. Your ability to write well significantly improves the chances that your paper will be accepted. Ronald Azuma

And I just wasn’t a good enough story teller. To improve my writing, I took an unlikely approach – I would blog, I would learn to tell stories via blogging .

Interesting, several articles have discussed the relationship between blogging and research performance. But they look at it from the perspective of disseminating research output – I.e rewriting academic journal articles so everyone can digest the main points. So called science blogging.  On the flip-side, I am referring to blogging – writing posts on general topics –  as a valuable process that helps develop skills which are directly transferable to social science research writing. Social sciences has to do with examining relationships between individuals (and objects) in a society – and there are multiple different methodologies that can be used to answer any given research question. However, writing up all these studies, despite the chosen methodology, involves elements of story-telling. This post does not focus on any given methodology but draws overt correlations between stuff I’ve learned from general blog writing and social science research report writing.

Over the past 12 months, I have written dozens of blog posts covering technical tutorials among other subjects, and here are 8 things I have learned. Continue reading →